Elko County Rose Garden

GARDEN PLAN

Conceptual Garden Design

About the Garden

Begun in 2000, this garden was created as an ever changing, staged,

community garden. It is located in Elko, Nevada, behind the Elko County Courthouse at the corner of 6th and Pine streets.

The primary objective is to create a garden that contains a collection of winter hardy, easy care roses. The goal is to identify and collect those roses that like living and thrive in Elko's climate, a USDA hardiness zone 5A (average annual minimum temperature of -15 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit). The first criteria is to be able to survive unprotected in our climate without having to do a lengthy and costly winterizing procedure. The garden is planned to contain a collection of species, old, modern and shrub varieties.

The garden plan is to each year select and add approximately 50 winter hardy roses from various breeders or countries. For the first year, the roses hybridized by the late Dr. Griffith Buck have been selected.

Dr. Buck was a professor of horticulture at Iowa State University at Ames. He hybridized around 100 roses. He bred roses specifically for disease resistance and cold hardiness. His approach was to introduce hardiness into the Hybrid Tea, Grandiflora and Floribunda roses using genes from hardier varieties.

The current 10 year plan is to plant (1) Dr. Buck roses (2) Canadian (3) David Austin English Roses (4) German (5) French (6) Scandinavian (7) United States (8) United Kingdom (9) species and (10) other countries and old roses with unknown origin.

The garden has been designed, established and maintained by the Elko Rose Garden Assoc., a Nevada Non-Profit Corporation. The Association president is Dan Turner. Mr. Turner can be reached at turner@mightymoose.us

.
The garden has been supported entirely by donations from local individuals and businesses. No tax revenue has been used for this project. We would like to thank Mr. George Boucher, Elko County Manager, for his community spirit and help in making this garden a reality.

The Year 1 design has now been completed (see Diary Page). The garden contains 73 roses, consisting of 64 varieties. All are Dr. Buck Roses (see Rose List Page). The climbing rose "Applejack" has been planted where the arbors are shown. It is planned to add the arbors in 2002.

    Qualified unanimous approval, by the Elko County Commissioners, to proceed with the second year design was granted on August 2, 2001. The commissioners elected to eliminate the rose bed connected to the Year 1 stage. It is now planned to plant the additional Dr. Buck roses in the newly approved north-western bed. The south-western is planned to contain Canadian-bred roses varieties. It is planned to plant approximately 50 additional roses in the spring of 2002. If all goes as hoped, at the end of Year 2, the garden will contain 123 rosebushes.

Wish lists of the roses, with hybridizers and descriptions, for each of the planned 10 years have been prepared and are available on request. These lists, of course, will change as our knowledge and experience grows.

There is some concern that the selected site of the rose garden may eventually prove unsuitable due to 'conflict in use' reasons. There are at least four viable alternatives: (1) leave the garden at the present location and continue with the original design (2) redesign to garden to work around the 'use conflicts' (3) relocate the garden to a new location or (4) leave the established portion of the garden in its present location and create a new garden at an alternative location having no site conflicts. This decision will need to be made in 2002 or 2003.